When My Past is full of darkness on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Dale Johnson, and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors,

where we seek to provide biblical solutions to the problems that people face.

This week on the podcast I have with me, Dr. Jacob Elwert.

He's the pastor of discipleship ministries at inner city Baptist Church in Allen Park, Michigan.

He also serves as assistant professor of biblical counseling at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary.

He's a fellow with ACBC and also a board member. He and his

wife, Jennifer, have three children and one grandchild. Jacob, welcome to the podcast, brother.

Thank you for having me. Now, we're going to talk about a difficult subject, and so many people

ask this question. In fact, so many people look back at the darkness of their past. Many people

think the gospel can't reach

them. Many people think that whatever it is that's happened in their past is now going to

determine who they are in the future. But the Bible seems to tell a different story. And I can't

wait to get into some of this as we try to provide hope specifically when we have a dark past.

So I want you to describe first, set this up.

What do you mean when we're talking about this concept of a dark past and how do people

who've had a dark past, how do they deal with something like that?

I think about a dark past as someone who has a past full of suffering or could be sin or regret, made some bad choices or

whatever the case, the first thing I want to do in helping them is to hear what they have

experienced. And then I want to acknowledge the reality of their suffering. I want to help them

sort out the difference between suffering as a result of their own sin and suffering

because of living in a world that's cursed by sin.

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